A significant global trend during the 1990s is the restructuring of higher education systems. The essence of this restructuring process is a redefinition of the relationship between institutions of higher learning, the state, and the market, and a drastic reduction of institutional autonomy. This article is an analysis of the restructuring process in the forms of privatisation of higher education and corporatisation of public universities in Malaysia. This analysis highlights the context of higher education reforms in the era of globalization, major trends in higher education reforms and Malaysia's responses to these global trends. By focusing on the institutional level, this article examines the expansion and diversification of private higher education as well as the change in the governance and culture of public universities brought about by privatisation and corporatisation.

This paper examines how science education becomes institutionalized in Third World countries using Malaysia as a case study. The findings shows that the development of science education in Malaysia has been greatly influenced by international trends and the country's socio-political development. Science gained a place in the school curriculum in the midst of British colonial rule. The strong colonial influence on school science continued throughout the early independence period but, in the 1980s, external influences on science education came from both Western and Islamic countries. In each of the historical periods, external world cultural forces interacted with internal socio-political forces resulting in a national science curriculum which is in accord with world cultural rules but at the same time quite indigenous in character. This study also suggests that while each nation-state aspires to develop an indigenous form of science education that would best suit the national context, the outcome tends to be more universalistic than particularistic due to global influences.

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